Teachers in Change. NZ Post Primary Teachers Association Curriculum Review Group. Longmans 1975. $2.95

Reviewed by Anthony Ward.

The NZPPTA published in 1969 Education in Change, and now follows this with Teachers in Change. Both are considerable contributions to the development of education in NZ and the questioning of this development. Both however, beg far more questions than they directly raise.

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One begins to hope that an analysis of the social role of teachers in an antagonistic class society is starting. Yet these are the high points, and the rest of the book details a retreat from them — firstly to asserting that so long as the teacher respects his pupils backgrounds everything is roses. How this is to be done when individualistic middle class techniques (against which NZPPTA has, to its credit, made some progress) continue to be used: and when the wider society is increasingly conscious of class antagonisms is not discussed. The second retreat comes in the summary at the end (P.94): The student teacher determines the knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes and peer relationships that pupils bring with them into their classroom. Either this is a clear restatement of middle class values or it supposes the classroom as a magically supra-class institution. In view of the stress the book puts on communicating with students, especially by presenting concepts in terms they understand this conclusion represents a major contradiction.

A possible asnwer to this is that the book is not intended primarily as an analysis of teachers roles in society. This, indeed is true, and leads directly to the second fundamental criticism. The book outlines in considerable detail (and, given its limited schema, probably successfully) techniques available in training teachers when they get into schools. Thus appendix 1, summarising the book, outlines diagnostic, design implementation and evaluation skills and professional attitudes required of the 'successful teachers'. Agreed, many of these are more progressive than present school practices (e.g. P.95 the teacher discusses frankly such matters as his own attitudes to race, his personal tastes and values, and the socio-economic background of his pupils — and what happened to human relationships?) but there is little analysis of the wider issues of 'education for what?' or 'teacher-training for what?' To some extent these questions were posed in Education in Change, but that is now 6 years ago and things have changed. More importantly, teaching and teacher-training have ideological functions — primarily in capitalistic society to reinforce middle class norms. An emphasis on 'professionalism' hides this function and retards attempts to serve the people by encouraging students analysis of society and their position in it.

In terms of its limited scope 'about teachers and the education of teachers' this book is reasonably successful in raising purely technical questions about the nature of teacher training. In terms of its aims 'to improve the education of young people in our schools' it cannot afford to ignore the questions it does. Page 78 tells us 'accurate diagnosis of a particular situation must precede attempts to change it', yet the book all but ignores this sound advice. For the accurate diagnosis the work of Ivan Illich, Paolo Frere (who does not even rate a mention in the Bibliography) or for the New Zealand case, Graeme Clark's articles (in Salient and the NZ PPTA Journal in 1973) are of considerably more value.